Web 57DHYAFZZFLj March 30 2026 Geothermal power is in but Offshore wind is out in Houston
In this Webisode 1 Vaccines 2 CERAWeek in Houston Texas 3 The Russian War against Ukraine
1 United States RFK Junior and Vaccines RAWSEP View It turns out that COVID 19 Vaccines as well as vaccines in general are popular with the American public since vaccines stop illness and prevent unnecessary deaths Popularity of vaccines is not only legal and political reality it is reality based on truths of science and modern medicine The RFK Junior Vaccine Agenda for instance reducing childhood vaccines from 17 to 11 and his opposition to the COVID 19 vaccine based on no medical evidence Hits Roadblocks Diminishing the RFK Junior Clout The Health Secretary RFK Junior vaccine skepticism is posing challenges for the Trump administration Top health jobs are unfilled and a court has blocked his vaccine schedule changes The RFK Junior vaccine agenda along with his insistence that vaccines are somehow linked to autism despite a lack of evidence has always been a bit of a heel of Achilles Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The New York Times March 26 2026 The RFK Junior crusade to scale back American reliance on vaccines has collided with political and legal realities that have endangered the Senate confirmation of one top health official delayed the nomination of another and diminished his clout in Washington A string of developments over the past several weeks have put the RFK Junior vaccine agenda at risk When Doctor Casey Means who does not hold a current medical license appeared before the health committee one month ago Republican Senator Bill Cassidy who is also a medical doctor grilled her on promotion of vaccine skepticism Doctor Means said she supported vaccines but believed that parents should consult their pediatricians Her answers did not seem to satisfy Cassidy On Capitol Hill on Thursday Senator Cassidy did not answer a question about when he might schedule a committee vote on her confirmation His Republican colleagues Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who have both indicated that they are not ready to support unlicensed Doctor Casey Means also did not answer questions
2A Texas Houston CERAWeek stands for Cambridge Energy Research Associates Week Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization Wikipedia As of March 30 2026 Founded in 1983 by Daniel Yergin and James Rosenfield it originated as the annual executive conference for their firm CERA It is now organized by S and P Global and is renowned as the premier annual gathering for the global energy industry frequently held in Houston Texas Key Usage Examples and Context Super Bowl of Energy Frequently used synonymously with CERAWeek to describe its status as the premier high profile gathering of energy CEOs government officials and policymakers Energy Transition Forum It serves as a major platform for discussing topics like energy security climate change and technology developments as noted by the DOE Office of Electricity Industry Networking It acts as a global reunion to discuss geopolitics and market trends often called a state of the industry event as described by the Houston Chronicle Synonyms Related Terms The premier energy event of the world Super Bowl of energy Global energy gathering The conference has evolved to focus on the full energy spectrum including technology and sustainability acting as a crucial meeting point for industry leaders according to the Energy Futures Initiative EFI Foundation founded by former US Energy Secretary in the Obama Administration Ernest Moniz which is a Washington DC based nonpartisan nonprofit It provides research-backed, data-driven solutions for climate change and energy transitions Key focus areas include hydrogen, nuclear scaling and labor and energy partnerships
2B Texas Houston How Clean Energy Firms Are Trying to Survive the Trump Era Offshore wind is out Geothermal power is in And many climate technology startups are looking for ways to carry on without federal backing A tour of the Geothermal House of the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston this week Geothermal energy is emerging as one of the big green winners of the Trump era Reporting from one of the biggest energy industry conferences in the US in Houston Texas RAWSEP View RAWSEP believes that all clean energy options should be pursued at this time when dirty energy is blocked from passage through the Strait of Hormuz indefinitely CEOs feel constrained financially by withdrawal of grant funds and legal injunctions by Trump lawsuits from pursuing Offshore Wind This is limited vision for clean energy firms since producing energy from Wind and Solar is cheaper than using dirty fossil fuels or dirty solid fuel burning in the case of wood burning or biomass burning Therefore energy from clean energy can be offered to consumers at lower prices and clean energy companies can satisfy customer demand and still make a profit The Clean Energy Winners despite Trump policies appear to be EDP Renewables North America Brimstone Atmos Zero and Redwood Materials which despite its name appears to only be interested in recycling batteries From Wikipedia Redwood Materials Incorporated is an American company headquartered in Carson City Nevada The company aims to recycle lithium ion batteries and produce battery materials for electromobility and electrical storage systems Founded in 2017 by JB Straubel Redwood Materials was reported to have a valuation of about 6 billion dollars as of October 2025 History While at Tesla Straubel was part of the Tesla founding technical team and contributed to the development of its early battery architecture and power electronics systems Other winners are Crusoe and Form Energies Top RAWSEP Excerpt which demonstrates how clean energy companies are justifying the existence of each company financially The Brimstone company recently announced that it had refined its process so it can harvest those same silicate rocks to produce both cement and other valuable industrial materials like alumina a precursor to aluminum that the United States typically imports The bet is that by producing multiple products together Brimstone can become economically competitive with traditional cement makers If you are going to solve the climate problem you are going to have to find solutions that just have fundamentally better economics Other companies are making similar bets that they can displace fossil fuels even without government subsidies Another start up AtmosZero is developing giant heat pumps that can be used instead of gas fired boilers to generate steam for industrial facilities The company is already testing its technology at a brewery in Fort Collins Colorado trying to demonstrate that electrifying can make financial sense for companies Electrifying is also being cleaner A decade ago you might have called us clean tech or climate tech but we are really focused on the value of electrification said the AtmosZero start up chief executive We want our technology to be cost effective no matter which way the policy pendulum swings New energy winners Other clean energy firms are increasingly billing themselves as a solution to the AI boom Electricity demand is rising for the first time in decades as tech giants build hundreds of energy hungry AI data centers Although many are being powered by new natural gas plants big tech companies like Google Microsoft and Amazon say they are still committed to reducing their overall carbon emissions That has provided a boost to wind and solar firms that have otherwise faced major obstacles from the Trump administration The reality is that renewables are often the fastest energy source we can deploy said the chief executive of EDP Renewables North America a leading wind and solar developer So even if we have not had very favorable clean energy policy in the last 12 months we continue to see significant amounts of procurement from corporates and utilities Batteries are also benefiting Crusoe a data center developer announced this week major partnerships with Form Energy which has developed a new type of iron air battery that can store what is worth 100 hours of electricity far more than traditional batteries as well as with Redwood Materials which is recycling old electric car batteries to provide grid storage The short term loser companies under Trump appear to be Sublime Systems which sought to make carbon free cement Because the Fervo Energy company drills like shale drilling this Geothermal Firm has gained the favor of the Trump RAWSEP interjection The drilling itself may not be good for the environment Offshore wind and other clean energy may turn to Europe which may at least short term be financially a loss for the United States China is already ahead of the United States on solar panels and electric vehicles and may extend its clean energy financial winning streak by turning more to so called clean nuclear fusion and green hydrogen during the Trump Era There is a question of whether nuclear energy can be truly clean Nuclear facilities carry the risk of nuclear accidents through predictable human error and leaking of nuclear radiation during peacetime Nuclear facilities can possibly be held hostage with threats of nuclear radiation leakage during wartime as shown by Russian possible access to the Chornobyl plant for the last 4 years and recent US Israel bombing of Iran nuclear facilities that could result in nuclear radiation leakage Like the sentence Just do not burn wood to begin with and then you will not have to deal with carbon capture the same could be said about nuclear radiation Just do not turn to nuclear to begin with and then you do not have to deal with the threat of nuclear radiation leakage Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization The New York Times March 28 2026 RAWSEP View Carbon Removal from the air does not work and subsidies for it could be better used for not burning fossil fuels and not burning other solid fuels like wood to begin with That means pursuing energy that is clean from the start like wind and solar and finding other ways to finance it rather than using Trump era federal funding Of course the Trump era promotion of coal and other fossil fuel burning and probably also wood burning is deliberate ignorance about the pollution from these dirty sources which harms human health and hastens climate change Pollution caused diseases and early deaths exacts a financial toll on society as well The Blockade of fossil fuels at the Strait of Hormuz may cause rational politicians to retract Trump policies promoting fossil fuels and taking funds from clean energy projects designated in the Biden Era From the article excerpt Clean energy is not dead in the Trump era But it does look different these days Since returning to office Trump has dismantled federal efforts to fight climate change and vowed to stop new wind turbines from going up His administration has canceled billions of dollars in funding for technologies that might one day help reduce planet warming emissions and it has instead pushed to expand domestic oil and gas drilling Those moves have taken a brutal toll on the budding clean energy industry in the US including canceled offshore wind farms shuttered electric car factories and layoffs at climate technology startups Yet many clean energy executives say they are finding ways to adapt and some promising technologies that might help slow global warming are moving forward Some industries such as geothermal energy or nuclear power still receive support from the Trump administration Startups that could help cut emissions from factories are figuring out how to survive without federal support Others such as battery companies are looking to pitch themselves as a solution for the artificial intelligence and data center boom More than 300 startups attended a major annual energy industry summit this week known as CERAWeek by S and P Global showcasing ideas for investors and policymakers like advanced batteries that can store power for multiple days and lower emission jet fuel We have just gone through an era of radical uncertainty for clean energy said an executive vice president at the Energy Futures Initiative a Washington nonprofit organization Many executives said they were no longer counting on government subsidies or the good will of environmentally minded politicians to support their business For years the clean tech world had a lot of idealistic founders who felt that the rules of capitalism had changed For years clean tech world thought that politics would entirely reorient itself around stopping carbon dioxide emissions and that is how we were going to make money said the founder of a startup called Brimstone When Brimstone was founded in 2019 the company aimed to produce cement with half the carbon dioxide emissions of regular cement by using carbon free silicate rocks instead of limestone The Biden administration awarded the company a 189 million dollar grant as part of its push to reduce carbon emissions from heavy industry But the Trump administration abruptly canceled the grant last year The Trump administration has largely scorned wind and solar power and has sought to promote fossil fuels like natural gas and coal as the most important near term solutions to rising electricity demand Yet officials have also provided support and money to low emissions energy sources like advanced nuclear power and next generation geothermal Geothermal energy in particular is emerging as one of the big renewable energy winners of the current era Traditionally geothermal production was limited to a handful of locations such as Iceland or California where companies could easily tap underground hot water reservoirs close to the surface But in recent years some startups most notably a company called Fervo Energy have sought to adapt modern drilling techniques from the oil and gas industry to tap underground heat in more places This has raised hopes that geothermal could offer a vast new source of emissions free power that unlike wind and solar can run at all hours The industry has also received significant investments from oil and gas firms that have experience with large scale drilling Yet the Trump return to office has also brought a lot of clean energy casualties Last month Sublime Systems a Boston based clean tech start up announced that it was laying off two thirds of its workers The company had developed a novel process to make carbon free cement using electricity and signed a deal to produce more than 6 hundred thousand tons of cement for Microsoft With the help of an 87 million grant dollar from the Biden administration it was building its first factory in Holyoke Massachusetts The Trump administration terminated that grant last year as part of billions of dollars in cuts to Biden era funding In a statement Sublime said the cancellation created compounding challenges for financing and work on the Holyoke facility has paused The company says it still hopes to build its first factory whether in North America or Europe and continues to talk to the Energy Department about restoring its award Another technology that has faltered is known as green hydrogen the production of clean burning hydrogen fuel using wind or solar power Many firms have abandoned those efforts in part because the Trump administration has cut funding and because the process requires vast amounts of cheap electricity That electricity that is now being diverted to data centers If you are a clean energy technology that was depending on cheap grid power for your business you are in a lot of trouble right now said a man who served as the undersecretary for infrastructure at the Energy Department in the Biden administration Especially with how much the hyper scalers are willing to pay for that electricity During the Biden years there was also a surge of interest and more than 3 billion dollars in federal funding That money was for companies that were experimenting with techniques to pull carbon dioxide from the air in an effort to slow climate change But many of those companies are now scaling back as global warming has faded as a national political priority and federal funds have been in limbo Climeworks one Swiss start up that was pursuing carbon removal laid off one fifth of its staff last May The company cited shifting policy priorities where climate tech is seeing reduced momentum in some areas and uncertainty surrounding a project in Louisiana backed by the federal government Carbon removal is definitely an out of favor category for early stage investors said a woman co-founder of the venture capital firm Azolla Ventures She mentioned companies in the Azolla portfolio that make floating offshore wind turbines or that are trying to capture carbon dioxide from the exhaust of ships China has vowed in its latest five year plan to invest heavily in nascent clean energy technologies including green hydrogen and nuclear fusion Some analysts wonder whether China which has come to dominate industries like solar panels and electric vehicles could soon eclipse the United States in those realms too Energy Futures Initiative where we are absolutely losing our edge is in scaling new technologies and developing a domestic market for them so that we can export them So where else could we see that happen?
3 Ukraine The Russian war against Ukraine Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization Kiev Independent Ukraine Daily March 30 2026 Ukrainian drones reportedly strike chemical plant in the Samara Oblast of Russia Photos and videos posted on social media purportedly show smoke rising from the area of the Kuibyshev Azot chemical plant in Tolyatti Explosions reported air defense engaged in Russian city of Taganrog Explosions were heard in the southern Russian city of Taganrog late on March 29 amid a drone attack local social media outlets reported Serious damage Ukrainian drones deal fresh blows to the Ust Luga port of Russia SBU says Leningrad Oblast Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said rescuers were working at the port to extinguish the fire at around 7 am local time but reported no casualties US tells Ukraine no PURL military aid redirected to Middle East Sybiha says The Sybiha comments came after the G7 Summit of Foreign Ministers in France where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave the reassurance in person Downed Ukrainian drone identified in Finland officials say Several drones crashed in Finland and at least one has been identified as Ukrainian Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on March 29 Rheinmetall backtracks praises the Kyiv innovation after CEO derides Ukrainian Lego drones German defense company Rheinmetall issued a statement on March 29 expressing respect for the Ukraine defense efforts after facing backlash over comments that appeared to downplay Ukrainian innovation in warfare For four years Ukraine Daily has brought you the latest updates from Ukraine no matter the circumstances Ukraine war latest Russian glide bomb attack on Kramatorsk kills 3 including 13 year old boy governor says At least three people including a 13 year old boy were killed and seven others were wounded by a Russian glide bomb attack on Kramatorsk Donetsk Oblast Governor Vadym Filashkin reported on March 29 War in Iran war in Ukraine Europe must act where it counts Flying balalaika or a death moped with wings is how Ukrainians refer to the Iranian Russian Shahed drone On March first one of these crude cheap but devastatingly effective killing machines struck a US military operations center in Kuwait killing six American soldiers